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Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the thirtieth of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Billy fitz Simons. Over the weekend, Optus confirmed its second triple zero outage in less than two weeks. The latest incident affected thousands of New South Wales customers and it follows an outage linked to four deaths earlier this month. But Optus isn't the only telco to report emergency call disruptions in recent years. You might remember a high profile Telstra outage in twenty
twenty four. So what's going on with our triple zero system? In today's podcast, we are going to unpack these latest outages and explain how Australia's emergency call service works, who is responsible for it, and what happens when it fails. We'll get into all of that in too steep dive right after a quick message from our sponsor.
So, m OPTAs has been in the headlines a lot this month, and I feel like there has been so much going on that's kind of hard to know where to start. But I think we should start with what happened over the weekend, the last thing that has happened. Do you want to tell us about that? Exactly?
So the latest outage, the latest Opters outage was linked to a mobile phone tower in the Woollongong suburb of Dapto in New South Wales that affected around four and a half thousand users in the area on Sunday between three am and twelve twenty pm, so for over nine hours. Now. OPTAs said it's reviewed nine failed calls to triple zero during that time, including one instance where a caller required an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services.
But the telco said that all of those who were impacted are okay to use its own language and that the issue has been fixed.
And so, so the reason why this made such big news is because it's actually the second outage this month. Do you want to tell us about the first one?
Yes? So. On September eighteenth, Optus experienced a technical failure is what it called it, during a network upgrade. Now, this failure impacted triple zero calls in large parts of the country across multiple states, including South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. There were also some calls in New South Wales that were impacted, and that's because they were closer to the SA border, so those calls relied
on South Australian mobile towers. Optus said that it happened during a regular upgrade, so it was conducting a routine upgrade in the early hours of the eighteenth of September, a Thursday, and it said that its initial testing and monitoring after that upgrade was rolled out didn't indicate any issues. So on Optus's side, things all looked fine, but it became aware of a problem when two customers contacted the telcoat report that they couldn't contact Triple zero.
And how did Optus respond to that?
So, according to opt to CEO Stephen Rue, once it was notified, quote, we stopped the upgrade, restoring Triple zero
and notified relevant stakeholders including police and government agencies. Approximately six hundred calls were identified to have failed during that outage, which lasted around thirteen hours, and once it had pulled all the records from the network and had all the call details of all the failed Triple zero calls, Optus commenced welfare checks, So that involves reaching out to every single person that tried to call Triple zero and couldn't.
And during those checks, the CEO, Stephen Rue, confirmed three people had died after the household was unable to contact emergency services.
What do we know about those deaths?
So the deaths include a sixty eight year old woman from South Australia, a seventy four year old man in Western Australia, and an eight week old boy. But we have since heard from SA Police that while the family of that baby was impacted by the outage, it's unlikely to have contributed to.
The death of the baby.
So preliminary investigations by SA Police say that the grandmother of the boy attempted to contact Triple zero using her phone. When she couldn't get through, she immediately used another mobile telephone in the house which did successfully connect to Triple zero. A couple of days after the outage, we heard about an additional death, a fourth death linked to this outage, and that was reported in WA a forty nine year old Perth man. His body was discovered by police during
a welfare check. That welfare check was triggered by his failed call and do.
We know what exactly caused this outage?
So the Optus CEO has blamed the outage on human error, basically what he has called an employee failure to follow established protocols for a routine firewall upgrade. And we don't have you know, a lot more than that. There's some technical terminology around that failure, but I don't think it changes the fact that this is a human error that
Optics is attributing the outage to. As for the most recent outage, that one near Wollongong over the weekend, at the time of recording, we don't actually know what happened. OPTAs said it's continuing to investigate the cause of the issue, but that service has been restored. So we don't know what happened near Wollongong, but we do know that users in that area can now contact Triple zero without any issues.
Okay, so we're still learning more about that most recent outage, but the earlier one has been linked to for desk. Like you said, what I've been surprised to learn about this is that what telephone company you're with does actually impact your ability to call Triple zero. And so I guess my question is how does Australia's emergency call system actually work? Like why is it connected to what tele phone company you're is?
So in a perfect situation, if everything is going smoothly, it shouldn't actually matter who your telco is, and I'll explain why. What's really important to understand is that Telstra plays a huge role in our Triple zero service. It's recognized by the federal government as the quote emergency call
person for triple zero, also for one one two. If you call one one two, that's like the international emergency number, no matter what country you're in, one one two will connect you with the relevant emergency services.
Okay, wait pause, two things that I've learned. Yes, so Telstra is, you said, the emergency contact person.
So that's what the kind of communications legislation, the Regulatory Framework has designated as its title. But what that means is that Telstra is responsible for providing the service that answers calls two triple zero, oh see, and it transfers them to the requested emergency service organization with relevant details. So when a person calls triple zero, they will speak to a Telstra operator who will designate their call to
emergency services. So that's the person that answers the call and says, you know, do you need police, ambulance, firefighters? What's going on?
Are you? Saye?
What do you need? And then they will pass that information on to the relevant authority.
Got it? And then the second thing I learned, I've never heard of one one two before.
Yeah, this was something that I didn't know either. So one one two apparently is the number if you are overseas and you don't know the number for wherever you are, it's one one too, not nine to one one.
Interesting, and does that mean that if you can't if you are in the situation where there is an outage, maybe you don't know that there's an adage, but for some reason you're not able to call Triple zero, do you then call one one two and it should work.
If it's not working, as in these outages that we are talking about today, if those systems aren't working, then it doesn't matter if you call Triple zero or one one two. So Telstra is the national operator of Triple zero, regardless of which mobile network you're on. But this is where it kind of gets a little bit more complicated. Telstra operates the Triple zero service, but all mobile networks
have obligations to ensure your call can reach Telstra. So if for whatever reason, you cannot connect to the network that you're subscribed to, be that Optus Votera Phone TPG, those telcos have an obligation to ensure that your phone will attempt to roam and connect via another carrier's network.
This is called camping on. Bear with me because I know it's a little bit complex, but basically, if your home network, let's say you're an OPTI customer, If your home phone she's voted, well, full disclosure, I am with OPTAs still oh perfect. If your home network isn't working, your phone should automatically connect to any available network for emergency calls. So Optis, voter Phone, TPG, Telstra, they all have a relationship where they work together to ensure that
this camping on procedure can work. And they work together to make that work because they have to buy law. So in Australia, those networks are required to take emergency calls from customers of competing networks through that mechanism.
But it's a camping on process that failed here, we think, so okay to just recap where we are. Telstra is responsible for the triple zero network. And so when anyone who's with any telephone company calls triple zero, they are speaking to a Telstra provider, a Telstra person.
Yes, but Telstra's not responsible for the whole network. All providers are responsible for the whole network.
Got it. They're just responsible for who you're speaking to on the other side of the phone, exactly, got it. But your provider, so that could be Optis in your case, Votaphone in my case. They are responsible for making sure that you can always reach triple zero. And if they're not able to provide that or facilitate that, then another network needs to be able to pick up your call. Exactly.
So those providers are responsible for ensuring customers can reach triple zero, including through their network or through camping on procedures. And Telstra are responsible for making sure that your call will be answered by a person at a desk who will facilitate passing it on to the relevant emergency services.
Got it. And so I guess the next question is why did this camping on process, this fall back process not work here?
So Optus is still investigating why, But the problem seems to be that the Optus network couldn't actually detect that there was any issue, So testing in place after the upgrade on that bigger outage appeared to show that everything was working. Everything seemed fine as far as opters could tell. So the specific part of the network that handles emergency calls needs to know it's broken in order to activate
the camping on. So there needs to be a red flag that says, Okay, this person has tried to call Triple zero and they're not getting through with our cell towers, so we need to put their call through a votaphone tower or a Telstra tower over there. Optus, plainly, it seems, didn't know that that issue was occurring. So last week it announced an independent review into the technical failure on the eighteenth of September that's the big one that was
linked to multiple deaths. It said. The review will quote identify the causes and canvas the applicable processes, protocols, and operations of the incident, and it will also examine the operational management of Triple zero calls in the Optus network and the actions that Optus took in response to the incident, including whether or not it adhered to its legislative requirements, So the findings from that are expected to be handed down by the end of the year.
I think it's fair to say that it's quite a significant failure. I think Optus has basically said that themselves. Ye, they've owned it and they've apologized ye. So what I'm interested in is what happens now. I know there is the Australian Communications and Media Authority. They are responsible for regulating this space. So now that this failure has happened, what does AKMA do in response?
Yeah, so AKMA basically responds by ensuring or investigating telco's like OPTAs to see if they have carried out their obligations, that they've met their legal requirements and basically to look into what they did before and after the outage. So AKMA can impose significant penalties and in terms of what OPTAs might be preparing itself for. This isn't the first time OPTAs has been in trouble under investigation for a similar issue. It's also not the first time an AUSSI
telco has been in trouble for a similar issue. There was a Telstra outage in twenty twenty four which was to do with the triple zero call Center, so a little bit different. There were breaches identified there and a three million dollar penalty. But for Optis, you know, there was this twenty twenty three outage that accrued a total penalty of more than twelve million dollars from AKMA. So
that outage disrupted services for over ten million customers. It impacted the ability of some calls to get through to triple zero. Ten million is huge. It's a bigger scale than we've seen in the last few weeks for Optis, But the outcomes of the most recent outages you could argue, have been much more devastating. So that event in twenty twenty three led to a government review. There were a bunch of recommendations aimed at preventing a recurrence, but there's obviously been a failure.
Has AKMA said what they will do about this failure?
So AKMA has launched an investigation into Optis regarding the September eighteen outage. That will involve closely examining not just the outage in the fallout, but how did Optis communicate with its customers to the public, governments, etc. How did it notify or when did it notify Telstra as the emergency call person.
About the outage.
How did it speak with National Emergency Management and AKMA and the government about what was going on. If Optis is found to have failed under these obligations to those stakeholders, it will face serious consequences. As mentioned, there was that twelve million dollar fine for the twenty twenty three outage. Given that there already has been a penalty, that there already has been action, I think AKMA will be taking that into account. That this is not the first time
that there has been potential breaches Bioptus. There may have been a failure to enact recommendations by authorities about how to prevent this from happening again. So I would say AKMA will be coming down sternly on Optis.
Here.
The Communications Minister Anika Wells has said that Optis failed the Australian people. Prime Minister Anthony Albernizi has called the telco's behavior completely unacceptable.
Yesterday I saw some headlines that the opposition leader Susan Lee is calling for a complete review of how Triple zero is working in the country.
Yeah, all right, So the coalition has said that the actions of Optus are not good enough. It's referred to that review over the twenty twenty three emergency outage. There were recommendations handed down that have been delayed, and essentially the Communication Minister has said that some of those oversights will be fast tracked to kind of improve accountability and
end to end oversight of Triple zero. But Susan Lee, the Opposition leader, said that Optus has now been responsible for three catastrophic failures and she is calling for, as you mentioned, Billy, an independent inquiry into the whole Triple zero ecosystem. In that press conference on Monday, Lee said governments have a responsibility here. The ecosystem needs an urgent inquiry, not just by the regulator, not just by tiptoeing around the government, but to stand up and fight for Australians
who deserve answers. OPTAs is under incredible scrutiny at all levels of government and across all parties. The South Australian government has criticized it for how it communicated about the outage, noting delays between the company finding out about the issue and actually notifying authorities. The South Australian Premier's office was only notified of the incident at the same time as
a press conference from the OPTA CEO. So you know, we can all probably agree that's not a great way for officials to have to learn about something like.
This, okay, And so in terms of what happens now, so we have this AKMA review that they have said that they are doing, we have OPTAs saying that they are conducting their own independent review, and then we also have this potential independent inquiry that Susan Lee, the opposition leader is pushing for. So a lot of different reviews potentially going on, and it will be interesting to see what the result of those are exactly.
Clearly something is missing from the current system, but it does feel like a lot of attention is being paid to the system to Optus's actions, and I'm sure we will know more in the coming weeks and months.
And thank you so much for explaining it to us, Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.